Title:Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robots

Abstract: Legged robots pose one of the greatest challenges in robotics. Dynamic and
agile maneuvers of animals cannot be imitated by existing methods that are
crafted by humans. A compelling alternative is reinforcement learning, which
requires minimal craftsmanship and promotes the natural evolution of a control
policy. However, so far, reinforcement learning research for legged robots is
mainly limited to simulation, and only few and comparably simple examples have
been deployed on real systems. The primary reason is that training with real
robots, particularly with dynamically balancing systems, is complicated and
expensive. In the present work, we introduce a method for training a neural
network policy in simulation and transferring it to a state-of-the-art legged
system, thereby leveraging fast, automated, and cost-effective data generation
schemes. The approach is applied to the ANYmal robot, a sophisticated
medium-dog-sized quadrupedal system. Using policies trained in simulation, the
quadrupedal machine achieves locomotion skills that go beyond what had been
achieved with prior methods: ANYmal is capable of precisely and
energy-efficiently following high-level body velocity commands, running faster
than before, and recovering from falling even in complex configurations.